Elements of Fear and Failure
by Cardinal Robbins
Summary: SVU AU Can John Munch cope when an interrogation goes horribly wrong, causing Sarah Zelman to surrender her badge? Caution: Waterboarding implied, after an extremely violent crime.


"Elements of Fear and Failure"

by Cardinal Robbins

Disclaimer: John Munch isn't mine, but Sarah Zelman is until Wolf comes to his senses and buys her. **This tale is for BabyYoshi25 (Munchkin25), who craved it and asked me to write it.** (I _**don't **_usually take requests, but this was too good to pass up.) The basic idea is hers, the execution is entirely mine. Thank you, M25. The timeframe in my AU? December, 2007

I couldn't take another minute of it, not after what she did and how she left.

As fast as I could manage, I slipped from the bullpen, took the stairs two at a time and slammed open the roof access door. The blast of cold wind didn't stop me, even while it turned my ears painfully red in the midst of a Manhattan winter.

Gloves on, my hands in the pockets of my coat, I needed to get away from what I'd seen. What if she had turned on me that way? Could I take it? Would our love for each other survive it?

She'd finally snapped. Reaching the point where no one could touch her, she had hit overload and I couldn't even protect her from herself. Raw fury had been unleashed in her, an immense rage consuming everything in its path including, it seemed to me, her very soul. For once in my career, I was helpless to stop my partner from the element of The Job, which mangles good cops and turns them toward self-destruction. Now she was gone, somewhere below in a place I couldn't see her, even from my bitterly cold vantage point.

It wasn't as if I'd come up here to find her, because I hadn't. My race to get to the roof was purely a measure of self-preservation. Standing here, the frigid air couldn't whip the fear from me no matter how hard it tried. Fear. For me, it was the knowledge you couldn't protect the person you love from themselves, no matter how you tried or what you were ready to sacrifice.

Why in the hell hadn't I seen it coming? How could I have not known she was wound far past pissed, beyond furious, to the point of not even knowing herself how far she'd go?

'Good cop – bad cop' spiraled out of my control in the interrogation room, even though we'd discussed it all well in advance of questioning the perp. She should have told me our case was too close to the bone, ripping open an abyss in her soul as she knew it had in mine. We had talked it through, or so I thought, sitting in the unmarked trying to make sense of a situation no one could sanely wrap their mind around.

She was in first, the inveterate smooth interrogator who could wring a confession from a piece of granite. She pretended to empathize with the perp so he could walk the path to giving it up with someone who seemed to care. Her soft voice, encouraging, coaxing, gently extracting every minute detail of the most heinous crimes imaginable. I thought she was on her game. I swear to God, if He's still listening to me, you have to believe me when I tell you she seemed able to do her job.

I never should have left her in that room by herself. Not with him. Not then.

We'd seen the photos of the crime scene, an upper middle-class master bedroom, the underside of the mattress bloodied. The entire room smelled of metallic, moldering fluid, the crime having been committed who knew how many days previous. I'd looked under the bed, found an old Samsonite suitcase and dragged it out into daylight.

When we opened it, the sight instantly burned itself into our retinas, causing us both to gasp, gagging. The perp had sexually tortured his 5 year-old son, raped him repeatedly and then – once he had finished using him like some obscene doll – dismembered him. Those bloodied tools he used were nestled amongst the pieces. No matter how many times we tried that day, no matter how much Mentholatum rub we put in our noses, we could not rid ourselves of the stench of the little boy's death.

Cragen met us at the scene, despite my asking him not to go into the room. Why should he have the image – the smell – in his head, when we were paid to do so instead? He wanted us to get with Huang, to get some counseling immediately, but he knew it wouldn't change anything. Not at this point. The damage had been done.

She asked me by habit if I was okay, but how could anyone be 'okay' after seeing what we had? A hack job. A child, a small human being with his own personality, his own capacity to love. The boy had been used for someone's perverted 'entertainment,' cut apart like meat and left in the darkness of a suitcase. No one could be 'okay' after seeing the end result of all that. She knew it as well as I did and probably regretted asking.

It had taken less than two days to find him; the father, who had abducted the boy from his mother's home in the midst of an acrimonious divorce. He had wanted to kill them both, but knew by grotesquely murdering the boy his mother would be forever devastated.

And then, files spread on the table in some macabre display, we were ready to interrogate him.

I stood behind the one-way glass with George Huang, in the small anteroom in which we observed the perp. She slipped into the room, a half-full bottle of water in her hand, acting as if it were just another conversation.

We heard her smoothly 'groom' him, as she called it, laying the groundwork for his confession. They talked amiably for forty-five minutes before she took a calculated turn, leading him adroitly into talking about his son.

He spoke of the child as a bargaining chip at first, the pawn in a divorce with no end in sight. Eventually, he laid out how he'd planned the abduction, how it all changed once his son rejected him. The boy had screamed for his mother, refusing to stop crying; sobbing so loudly the neighbors would hear him when they came home from work. No, the perp said, he wasn't going to allow anyone to take his son back to the woman he called 'that whore.' He'd kill him first. It was then his plan had changed, fueled by a fifth of Jack Daniels and his collection of kiddie porn. As the details emerged, my stomach roiled and I knew even Huang was sickened.

Before I knew entirely what was happening, she left her chair and circled him a moment before she abruptly stopped. It startled me, seeing her stand behind him, the expression on her face changing so rapidly there was no time to react.

Her hand went to the back of his head as she pushed his face down to the table. He managed to turn his head so she wouldn't break his nose, while she continued to press down until I heard his jaw begin to pop.

Huang darted for the door, entering the interrogation room and yelling her name, but she was so enraged she didn't hear him through her fury. He motioned to pull her off, but she was immovable, her voice barely above a whisper while she told the perp in chilling detail what would happen to him now, after killing his own flesh and blood.

"Tell me again why you had to kill Michael, Keith. I want to hear it one more time." She'd used the boy's name to personalize the crime. I knew that soft sting in her voice from a thousand interrogations past, the tone she used to wring the truth out of the unrepentant. "Temporary insanity won't fly, you worthless fuck. Don't even try."

In an instant, she released him.

She wasn't through yet. Uncapping the bottle of water, she pushed her hand into his hair and yanked his head back, tipping the bottle above him until the water threatened to trickle. I saw his eyes widen as he saw the liquid, sure she was going to pour the water into his nose to drown him. He gasped as she shoved his head forward in a whiplash of anger. I knew she truly had meant to kill him, stopped only by God knows what. Or perhaps by the worn threads of her faith in God, who commanded her not to kill.

Anyone else would have lawyered up immediately, screaming their civil rights had been violated – maybe his had, I couldn't be sure. It surprised me when Huang stepped backward, into the shadows. He, too, felt the fear. He knew better than to touch her again.

I watched her maneuver in front of Keith Hiers, slowly sit down and idly take his right hand in hers. "Give me your rage, Keith," I heard her say, the consummate profiler. "Tell me one last time how you took him from your wife. Make me understand why you came up with the plan, how you felt when you carried it out on Michael." She stared so deeply into him, her gaze must have pushed through him. "I'm standing between you and the needle, Keith." Her voice lulled the remaining details from him, in all it's Mengele-like heinousness.

Huang slipped out of the room and took his place once again to observe, unable to believe Hiers had spilled out the entire story, his confession a fountain of words after having been holding them inside for days. "She's cracked him completely," he said. "They've gone over it three times now. You have more than enough to place him on Death Row at Rikers."

It was over when she picked up the small tape recorder from the table. She carried it out with her, taking out the tape and flipping it to me as I caught it. "We've got our confession," she said tersely, while it seemed the life had drained from her.

"Zelman, my office. Now."

I inwardly cringed when Cap said it, because he'd been behind the glass, too. He'd seen how easily she'd slipped back into her FBI tactics, torturing Hiers with the subtle threat of filling his airway with water, all for the sake of getting him to admit what he had done. Did the end justify the means? In her mind, there was no question.

With a deep breath, I forced myself to my desk, to write up Hiers' confession. Everyone kept their head down, because no one wanted to contemplate what would happen next.

We all jumped when she left Don's office, slamming the door behind her with enough force to shatter the glass. I saw her toss something metallic through what was left of the broken window – it had to be her badge, lying amongst the shards.

No one spoke as she walked by her desk, unholstered her Glock, placed it next to her computer and left without a word. Her gun. The firearm I'd bought her, to keep her safe on the streets. How would I protect her now?

I wanted to follow her, but my legs felt like lead. Cragen picked his way through the destruction and silently watched as she left, shaking his head sadly. None of us would have ever suspected she had it in her. No one but me, because the fear of what she's capable of resonates inside me. I've never wanted to see it. Never wanted to contemplate it could ever be turned toward me, toward us.

She's down there, among all those lights, all those people who have no idea what she's seen, what she's suffered. I'm the only one who knows. I'm the only one who's seen the effects of the aftermath. Cragen thinks he knows, but he has no idea. If he convinces her to return after a lengthy rip, so be it, but all of us will still be changed by what happened today. How can you go back to what was, after something so profound?

It's my fault, in a lot of ways, because I couldn't protect her. If I can't protect her – protect her from herself – then who can? Because, after all she and I have shared, after the fear washes away from seeing her as I did today, if there's nothing I can do to keep her safe from herself, I have failed.

I have to go. I have to find her. I love her too much to ever fail her.


End file.
